This invention relates to a printer such as a typewriter, and more particularly to a paper feeding apparatus for feeding individual sheets of paper to a printing station of the printer.
In the art of a paper feeding apparatus having a paper stacker or tray for storing a stack of paper sheets of one kind, it has been required to remove the paper stacker from a printer when it is desired to print on a sheet of paper of another kind which is different in size or format from said one kind. This removal of the stacker which is required to permit loading of said another kind of paper sheet without interference with the paper stacker, is cumbersome and time-consuming. There is also available in the art another type of paper feeding apparatus which has two paper stackers for feeding respective two kinds of paper different in size or format. In this type of feeding apparatus, one stacker is used for storing a frequently used kind of sheets and the other for storing another kind of sheets which are less frequently used and on which an interruption printing is effected while successive printings on the frequently used sheets are stopped temporarily. This two-stacker feeding apparatus is inherently complicated in construction and has a drawback that two or more sheets superposed for carbon copies are not smoothly and accurately fed because the feeding device acts on only the top sheet of a paper stack in the storage stacker.
On the other hand, it is also recognized in the field of feeding paper sheets from a paper stacker by using feed rollers that a high speed rotation on the rollers in an initial period of feeding will cause a slip between a sheet of paper and the rollers. This flip of the rollers on the paper sheet has been an obstacle to smooth and accurate feeding of the sheets to the printing station, and regarded as another drawback experienced in the art of a paper feeding device using feed rollers.